The sea can be a cruel place, as recent events have reminded us. The first director of the Irish Coast Guard has seen rescue services transformed into a 21st- century alliance, writes Lorna Siggins , Marine Correspondent
When newspapers publish photographs of surfers and sailboarders trying to subjugate elemental forces, Capt Liam Kirwan is not impressed. Rather like the oncologist watching a svelte, smoking, film star, or the paramedic reacting to slick car advertisements, his heart can sink right to his boots. Late last year, several surfers caught on rocks off Clare were so confident of their own abilities, so nonchalant about the sea's fickle moods, so preoccupied with hanging on to their equipment, that they refused assistance from the Irish Coast Guard's Shannon helicopter.
The rocks north of O'Brien's Tower were about 450 feet below the Cliffs of Moher, and were inaccessible to lifeboats which had been called out by Valentia Coast Guard. Arrangements were being made to put a cliff team down when the helicopter crew of Capt Rob Goodbody, co-pilot Liam Flynn and winch operator Micky Cook decided to try lowering their winchman, Davitt Ward, from 200 feet. At this point, two of the three had managed to surf out of danger, and one had tried to return to help his companion.
Winchman Ward was waved away after he risked his life to reach the pair. Eventually, all five reached safety, but not without the help of the Doolin and Aran lifeboats. Time for another water safety campaign, perhaps - or a system of penalties which the Department of Transport is said to be considering?
It's not the captain's problem now, for he has recently retired from his position as director of one of the most successful new State organisations in recent decades. No longer does he have to worry when the wind rises at night or the phone rings in the dark hours - although two of his sons, Darragh and Conor, are Naval Service divers, and Lieut Darragh Kirwan is head of the Navy diving unit.
Their father has spent 16 intense years as the first director of the Irish Coast Guard. During that time, the State's rescue services have been transformed from horse-drawn wagons and occasional candle-lit stations dotted along the 2,000-mile coastline to a 21st-century cohesive organisation with four medium-range helicopter bases, inshore rescue boats, quad bikes for beach searches and 1,200 trained staff and volunteers at 54 locations. Responsibility extends to inland waterways, and funding of mountain rescue. No longer is there dependence on the Royal National Lifeboat Institution's (RNLI) impressive network, and British helicopter rescue units. Indeed, decades of support can now be reciprocated, as Irish Coast Guard and Air Corps helicopters have crossed territorial boundaries on a number of occasions to assist.
Capt Kirwan was the subject of an emergency himself, far from home, during a 20-year career at sea with Irish Shipping and Pan Ocean Anco. He developed appendicitis in the Pacific, and was flown back to be operated on in Mount Carmel hospital. "I never went back to sea after that," he says simply, and there began a new career, applying his experience on shore to work with the State's marine survey office (MSO).
From early on, marine accidents were an integral part of his brief. He was involved in identification of the fishing vessel, Sharelga, which was sunk by a submarine off the Louth coast in April 1982, and he had direct experience of major pollution alerts off this coastline, such as the Kowloon Bridge, which ran up on rocks off the south-west coast in 1986.
At that stage in the mid 1980s, the MSO was responsible for the coast and cliff rescue service. Capt Kirwan began re-equipping the units with scant resources and running training programmes for volunteers, including instruction in cliff-climbing and rescue techniques. In 1988, a Donegal fishing skipper's wife, Joan McGinley, initiated a successful campaign for a helicopter service on the west coast, which resulted in a Government review of marine safety by former Garda Commissioner Eamon Doherty.
That well-thumbed report became Capt Kirwan's job description, when he was appointed director of the new Irish Marine Emergency Service (IMES) - now the Irish Coast Guard. "We had the coast radio stations at Malin, Co Donegal, and Valentia, Co Kerry, and the Marine Rescue Co-ordination Centre at Shannon airport. We had a VHF communications network, we had the RNLI, the Naval Service and the Air Corps, and my task was to bring it all together without alienating people."
"It was an operational approach, which was practical rather than legal - as in, tell me what you can and can't do for me and how it will be done, and I won't expect you to go beyond that. Our first such agreement was with the RNLI, and it meant that we all knew exactly where we stood at all times."
Similar agreements were drawn up with other State bodies and agencies - including the Defence Forces, the Commissioners of Irish Lights, community inshore rescue boats and the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland. The Air Corps initiated the first west coast helicopter base at Shannon, but it was then put out to contract as the defence force had no medium-range helicopter equipment. CHC Helicopters, formerly Bond, now runs all four helicopter bases at Shannon, Dublin, Waterford and Sligo for the Government. "The Air Corps decision to pull out of search and rescue was regrettable - it was always better from our point of view to have a choice," Capt Kirwan comments.
He doesn't say it, but the defence wing may have been one of the most difficult organisations to work with, given its own management's lack of support for search and rescue. Such internal management weaknesses were highlighted in the investigation into the Dauphin helicopter crash at Tramore, Co Waterford, in July 1999, when four airmen lost their lives on return from a rescue mission. The Defence Forces have still not given the four posthumous bravery awards.
Club diver Michael Heffernan did receive a posthumous gold medal in the State's inaugural marine rescue awards after he lost his life while involved in the Belderrig cave rescue off the Mayo coast nine years ago. However, it is testament to the training levels of Irish Coast Guard staff and volunteers that the toll among personnel has not been higher.
"Awareness of safety among the public has improved dramatically, and that has helped," Capt Kirwan says. Safety equipment has also become very sophisticated, there is a raft of legislation on use of lifejackets and other measures, but equipment can only go so far - as last week's sinkings of the 20-metre Pere Charles and 22 metre Honeydew II with the loss of seven lives appeared to demonstrate.
The Pere Charles was the third to sink off Hook Head in 14 months, and its liferafts had only been replaced the week before. The vessel had no time to issue a Mayday or Pan-Pan alert. Nor had the Honeydew II, which went down off Mine Head within hours of the Pere Charles. Two of its four crew survived in one of the vessel's liferafts, but its skipper owner Gerard Bohan and an eastern European crewman were not so fortunate.
The changing nature of marine leisure activity has also posed new challenges. Last year, there was a 15 per cent increase in pleasure craft incidents responded to by Irish Coast Guard units, when more than 4,500 people were rescued or assisted. There were also 27 pollution/salvage incidents and 20 hoax calls. The number of sea anglers lost off the coastline in recent months has prompted Clare County Council to erect multi-lingual safety notices - a move which Capt Kirwan welcomes. "It may require more than that, through Polish and Baltic publications and through the churches," he suggests.
For someone who has achieved so much, he still believes there is much more to do. "There is no point in having safety legislation that we can't enforce, and we need staff to carry out audits, inspections," he says. There is still no national safety plan and no State salvage facility, and he believes the Naval Service should purchase a multi-purpose emergency towing vessel when acquiring its three new ships.
He believes the Irish Coast Guard should also be given the authority to order someone to leave a vessel and accept assistance, and he isn't just thinking off the surfers off Co Clare. He isn't necessarily in favour of one streamlined organisation like the US Coastguard. "It is the ideal, I suppose, but our volunteers have been the backbone of this network. We have worked together, and that makes all the difference."
